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Jacksonian Democrats
The Jacksonian Democrats were a faction of American Second Party System politics which existed from 1825 to 1848. Led by the charismatic Tennessee war hero and politician Andrew Jackson, the Jacksonians emerged from the ashes of the disintegrating Democratic-Republican Party, and they supported the Jeffersonian ideals of agrarianism, limited government, states' rights, and strict constitutionalism, while they also supported the supremacy of the presidency over the US Congress, supported Manifest Destiny, and supported Catholic immigration. The Jacksonians were essentially a populist and social conservative party who saw themselves as the "party of the common man", opposing the aristocratic Whigs. The Jacksonians were strongest along the frontier, among subsistence farmers in rural America, and among Irish and German Catholic immigrants and poor laborers in the country's urban centers. They supported the abolition of property and tax requirements for voting, believing in universal male suffrage for white Americans regardless of religion. However, the party also favored social conservatism, as it opposed modernization in favor of the traditional agrarian lifestyle, supported Manifest Destiny and Indian removal to make way for the expansion of American agriculture and civilization, opposed public education (arguing that it took away parental responsibility and infringed on religious freedom due to its secular nature), and opposed the Whigs' moralistic reform movement (including abolitionism, temperance, and female suffrage). The Jacksonians were also supporters of fiscal conservatism, supporting free trade and opposing tariffs while also opposing national banks and chartered corporations. The Democrats sought to undermine the power of the aristocratic and business elites, the main voter bases of the Whig Party, seeing them as elitists who endangered democracy. The Jacksonians were in power from 1829 to 1841 and from 1845 to 1849, with Andrew Jackson (1829-1837), Martin Van Buren (1837-1841), and James K. Polk (1845-1849) serving as President. Jackson succeeded in destroying the national bank, oversaw the removal of the eastern Native American tribes across the Mississippi to Oklahoma in the "Trail of Tears", and established the supremacy of the federal government after the 1833 Nullification Crisis, which caused animosity between northern and southern Democrats and led to the growth of the Whig Party in the south. The Panic of 1837 damaged Van Buren's reputation and led to his defeat for re-election in 1841, but the Jacksonians enjoyed a resurgence in power in 1845 due to their support for the annexation of the Republic of Texas. Under Polk, the United States annexed Texas and extended its borders south to the Rio Grande and west to the Pacific Ocean as the result of the Mexican-American War. However, the war's end in 1848 led to slavery surpassing the role of government as the main point of contention in the country. The Democrats were split over the issue, with the Southern Democrats and Doughfaces supporting the extension of slavery to the Mexican Cession territories or the right of the states to decide, and many anti-extentionist northern Democrats joining forces with the northern Conscience Whigs, the abolitionist Free Soil Party, and the nativist Know Nothings in forming the Republican Party to oppose the extension of slavery. The issue of slavery was central to the rise of the Third Party System, in which the label "Jacksonian" became irrelevant as the role of government in the lives of its citizens was recontextualized as a debate over slavery rather than a debate over economics. Gallery Jacksonian views.png|Party views Category:Democratic Party factions Category:American parties Category:Conservative parties Category:Populist parties Category:Parties